Organizing Pantheons

[MNBlockHead]

Rob, your approach makes a lot of sense to me. I'm reorganizing my religions, pantheons, etc. using topics and keep groups to organizations of adherents. This is already working out well for me. Concepts is one of those elements that I have been seriously underutilizing the concepts topic.

I also need to become more comfortable leaving some things as top level rather than file everything in a container. The new custom views helps with this and I'm creating a "religion view" as things are getting complicated enough that I need a quick way to access the religious information and lore during the game. I'm also using views for the major realms so I can filter down to just info on a specific realm or area where the party is travelling

[Exmortis]

Love these kinds of discussions, not only do I get a great sense of what the team was thinking when they designed the core functionality of RW, but I also get a great feel for what others have done within this frame work.

I have attached two screens to show similar thoughts as Rob, each of my factions uses a different category to represent its place in the world. It could be an ethnic, racial, religious, academic organization or even a paramilitary organization. Each icon helps me and the players remember the type of organization/faction they represent.

I also show my Major NPC races as well as player races, all which are defined in Herolab using the Race Builder rules. Each keeps the spirit if its Vanguard heritage.

[MNBlockHead]

Thanks Exmortis, your screens shots are very helpful.

But just as everything has started to gel, I've hit another decision point. For one of my realms, I'm modeling it on a hybrid of ancient Rome and the Etruscan cultures. Basically, imagining what things would look like if the Etruscans had resisted the Romans, evolved beyond powerful coalitions of city states to build an empire. I'm assuming that the religion would look similar to the Romans with an even higher emphasis on divination and ritual and it being far more of a revealed religion and perhaps less practical/contractual in their dealing with the gods.

The issue in organizing this is that religion was really inseparable with the state, especially in Rome. The College of Pontiffs was just another government branch. My thought on how to handle this in realm works is to have a high level group:government topic that generally describes the government structere. Under it I have more detailed topics. The College of Pontiffs would be under the top-level government topic but I would enter it as a relgious group. Or should it be a government group? It really would be both.

Also, what about institutes of religious instruction, which would often provide instruction in a range of disciplines outside of just religious topics. I'm thinking of using either Groups:Other, or Location (most would be stand-alone places of learning, rather than a system of institutions).

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

Thanks Exmortis, your screens shots are very helpful.

But just as everything has started to gel, I've hit another decision point. For one of my realms, I'm modeling it on a hybrid of ancient Rome and the Etruscan cultures. Basically, imagining what things would look like if the Etruscans had resisted the Romans, evolved beyond powerful coalitions of city states to build an empire. I'm assuming that the religion would look similar to the Romans with an even higher emphasis on divination and ritual and it being far more of a revealed religion and perhaps less practical/contractual in their dealing with the gods.

I like this idea!! though not really fitting my world its an interesting historical slant! (my minor in Historys' is showing)

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

The issue in organizing this is that religion was really inseparable with the state, especially in Rome. The College of Pontiffs was just another government branch. My thought on how to handle this in realm works is to have a high level group:government topic that generally describes the government structere. Under it I have more detailed topics. The College of Pontiffs would be under the top-level government topic but I would enter it as a relgious group. Or should it be a government group? It really would be both.

Also, what about institutes of religious instruction, which would often provide instruction in a range of disciplines outside of just religious topics. I'm thinking of using either Groups:Other, or Location (most would be stand-alone places of learning, rather than a system of institutions).

While I have done less of this from the religious aspect (lack of time more than anything) I did do the latter part of your statement as it applies to knightly orders (which are kinda religious) and with Magical Academies.

Just my 2cp
DLG

[rob]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

The issue in organizing this is that religion was really inseparable with the state, especially in Rome. The College of Pontiffs was just another government branch. My thought on how to handle this in realm works is to have a high level group:government topic that generally describes the government structere. Under it I have more detailed topics. The College of Pontiffs would be under the top-level government topic but I would enter it as a relgious group. Or should it be a government group? It really would be both.

I would take a cue from the modern world in how best to model this. There are countries that have been under religious rule that fit your example perfectly. In a few cases, the religious rule has given way to some degree, but the religious groups themselves have not changed - only their political control. So that means the religious groups should really remain distinctly religious IMHO. They just happen to also be the political power in the region.

That being said, there is nothing that precludes you from adding aspects of political groups to religious groups. It would also be perfectly reasonable to have separate religious and political group topics, with the two simply reflecting those aspects of the same organization and having lots of cross-linkages. When a religious group rules, there are going to be branches of that group focused on the aspects of political rule, and those don't have to be put under the same topic. This could be an instance where you have an equivalent relationship that is revealed from the start. It's merely two halves of a whole.

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

Also, what about institutes of religious instruction, which would often provide instruction in a range of disciplines outside of just religious topics. I'm thinking of using either Groups:Other, or Location (most would be stand-alone places of learning, rather than a system of institutions).

Again, I would take my cue from the real world here. For example, there are lots of Catholic schools in the area where I live. What's their focus, though? Their focus is on education first and foremost, even though they sprinkle in a religious component to their teachings. That makes them educational groups to me and not religious groups, per se - of course, they would have ties to the religious groups, but that's not their purpose. In contrast, the local seminary school is a completely different matter, as its foremost purpose is on the religious teachings and would probably make more sense as part of a religious group. Obviously, this is just one way to model it that makes sense to me. You should model it however makes the most sense to you.

But hopefully this gives you some useful food for thought...

[MNBlockHead]

Rob and DLG, thanks again. I'm having a lot of fun with this. I don't know how much of this is particularly adding a whole lot to the players' experience, but I get a lot of plot ideas while filling in the background information to my realm.

One other thing I've learned in this present exercise is that changing a topic category actually is pretty smooth, so changing my mind on some of these decisions is not that big of a deal.